Bulwark: ‘We Won’t Know It’s a Different Country’
Trump is causing incredible harm. Whether we learn to live with it matters.
Another normal day in Trumplandia, where the president is scheduled to start feeding the Department of Education into the wood chipper today.
In yesterday’s newsletter, Bill quoted Philip Larkin’s “Homage to a Government,” on Britain’s quiet post-WWII retrenchment: “Next year we are to bring all the soldiers home for lack of money, and it is all right.”
I want to dwell briefly on another line from the same poem: “Our children will not know it’s a different country.”
The damage being done today, the scope of the global cruelty and tragedy, is hard to take in. It is the sort of stain that should be remembered. Will it be?
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These days, those who don’t back Trump like to talk about “touching the stove.” If the American public couldn’t be talked out of its complacent, decadent willingness to give the guy another spin at the wheel, maybe they can at least be shocked out of it. Maybe veterans will turn on him once they see the cuts to the VA, or retirees will revolt when they can’t get a person on the line to help with their Social Security payments.
But even if this does happen, that doesn’t mean putting things back together will be simple. Whether it will even be possible remains to be seen.
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Time: Trump’s Self-Inflicted Economic Wounds
he U.S. economy is often compared to a cruise ship—it takes a lot of time and force to change its direction. This is why so many economists looked at the strong economy that was inherited by the Trump Administration and projected fast growth, low unemployment, declining inflation, and healthy stock market appreciation continuing for the next couple of years. But President Donald Trump’s impact on the economy so far has been less a matter of turning the ship’s rudder and more similar to a ship firing torpedoes at itself.
The reversal in economic data since the Trump Administration took over has been historically rapid—and bad. The stock market is in near free fall. Interest rates are also falling, but for an undesirable reason: investors are assuming the Federal Reserve will need to swoop in soon to try to aggressively rescue a falling economy with future interest rate cuts. Unemployment insurance claims for federal workers have noticeably jumped even before the full force of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) layoffs have been recorded.
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Breaking Defense: Playing it SAFE? New EU spending plan leaves US out in the cold
“SAFE will allow Member States to immediately and massively scale up their defence investments through common procurement from the European defence industry, focusing on priority capabilities,” a statement from the European Commission reads.
BELFAST — The European Union has excluded the US from accessing a new €150 billion ($163 billion) Security Action for Europe (SAFE) funding package proposal as it charts a path toward greater strategic autonomy, rearmament at pace and less reliance on Washington for weapons.
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PropPublica: Emails Reveal Top IRS Lawyer Warned Trump Firings Were a “Fraud” on the Courts
The Trump administration cited “performance” failures to justify its mass firing of IRS workers. But this claim was “false,” a senior agency attorney warned officials, because the administration had not conducted any such performance assessment.
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Hartmann: Silencing the Defenders: Trump’s War on the Last Line of Resistance
If Trump can destroy America’s biggest law firms, who will be left to stand against him?
Donald Trump and his henchmen have set out to break the legs of American democracy by making it difficult for people he hates to hire an attorney to defend themselves or sue the Trump administration. He and Musk are also, with their public statements, apparently trying to terrify federal and state judges into submission with threats that their followers will employ violence.Jay Kuo: Targeting the Judges
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As Prof. Joyce Vance stated, “They are threatening to impeach judges over injunctions, often temporary ones meant to freeze the status quo for a few days while the courts get up to speed. It’s the kind of insanity that suggests the purpose is to delegitimize the judiciary, which is what dictators do.”
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Daily Beast: GOP Rep Laughs Gleefully as Voters Boo Musk’s DOGE at Raucous Town Hall
SOAKING UP THE HATE
About 75 percent of the crowd was there to challenge Wyoming congresswoman Harriet Hageman, according to estimates.
…About 500 people had packed the civic center auditorium in Laramie, where a local reporter with the Cowboy State Daily estimated about three-quarters of the crowd were there to oppose her.It was a “startling dynamic” in a state that Trump carried with more than 72 percent of the vote, according to the Cowboy State Daily. In 2022, Hageman ousted former Rep. Liz Cheney—who was a three-time incumbent—in a landslide victory in the Republican primary. Cheney lost by more than 2-1 after serving on the House committee that investigated Trump’s role in the deadly riots at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
CNN: Lawmakers clash with constituents following more angry town halls
The Daily: House Republican Disaster: As Rep. Scott Perry Hides, Constituents Demand AOC
Here is how things are going for House Republicans. Constituents can’t get Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) to hold a town hall, so they want AOC to come to the district instead.
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Chicago Sun Times: Immigration agents arrested a U.S. citizen and created warrants after an arrest, lawyers say in court
Chicago attorneys were in federal court Thursday accusing federal agents of violating immigration law and the constitutional rights of at least 22 people since January.
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The 22 cases include Chicago resident Julio Noriega, 54, a U.S. citizen who, according to court documents, was arrested, handcuffed and spent most of the night at an ICE processing center in suburban Broadview. He was never questioned about his citizenship and was only released after agents looked at his ID.“I was born in Chicago, Illinois, and am a United States citizen,” Noriega said in his statement, adding that on Jan. 31, after buying pizza in Berwyn he was surrounded by ICE agents and arrested. Officers took away his wallet, which had his ID and Social Security card. “They then handcuffed me and pushed me into a white van where other people were handcuffed as well.”
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – March 19, 2025
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Gutfeld’s outburst shows just how far today’s right wing has slid toward autocracy. It is a grim marker for our democracy, when a commentator with a wide audience openly calls for the replacement of the rule of law with a dictator.
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But arguing that the rule of law is obsolete is nothing new. It was common among certain circles in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. Then, as now, gangs of Americans insisted that the courts had been corrupted by politicians who let members of certain populations off easily because they wanted their votes, and thus were unleashing criminals on the community.In 1884, for example, Cincinnati, Ohio, erupted into three days of rioting when William Berner avoided a murder conviction after he and his fellow employee Joseph Palmer beat their employer, stableman William Kirk, strangled him, and threw his body in the woods outside the city. Convicted of manslaughter, Berner was sentenced to twenty years in prison rather than execution.
After the court announced Berner’s sentence, 8,000 of “the wisest and most prudent citizens” of the city, “well-known and respected citizens,” met to call for justice. They swept into the streets, becoming a mob that killed 56 people and injured more than 200 over the next two days. They fought against symbols of government authority, attacking the jail and police officers and burning the courthouse to the ground.
The argument used by the Cincinnati rioters—that a court system corrupted by politicians was letting criminals loose into the community—was the justification for the lynching of Black Americans from the 1890s onward.
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Closer to the Edge: Barbed Wire Cuts Both Ways: Why Denying Asylum Threatens Us All
Let’s not mince words here. Asylum is not some bleeding-heart, kumbaya concession for the downtrodden masses yearning to breathe free. It’s not charity, it’s not optional, and it’s not negotiable. It’s a human right—a hard-won piece of civilization carved out of the primordial muck by people who’ve been hunted, exiled, and burned at the stake for centuries. If we start pretending otherwise, we might as well roll the clock back to the Dark Ages, slap on some iron shackles, and let the wolves back in.
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The Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, even the Statue of Liberty—all of it is screaming the same message: asylum is a right, not a privilege.
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TNR: Trump-Musk Scandal on Ukrainian Kids Stolen by Russia Just Got Darker
Data vital to tracking these abducted Ukrainian children may have suddenly disappeared. A bipartisan group of House members wants to know: Who did this, and why?
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Disobey in Advance: The wild animals have traded places with us in the cage
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Popular Information: Secret policy shift could overwhelm Social Security offices
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The SSA message, sent March 19, states that the EBE program for “noncitizens granted work authorization” and “newly naturalized U.S. citizens” has been “temporarily” frozen. It is unknown how long the freeze will be in place or if it will ever be lifted.
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Robert Reich: The biggest upward redistribution of wealth in history is coming soon
Trump’s tariffs will especially hurt lower-income Americans, while his tax cuts will especially benefit the wealthy.
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The first problem with this is mathematical. America raises about $3 trillion each year from income taxes. The nation also imports about $3 trillion worth of goods each year.So to replace income taxes, tariffs would have to be at least 100 percent on all imported goods. Also, Americans would have to continue to import $3 trillion worth of goods every year. Neither of these is remotely plausible.
The second problem is who pays.
Trump keeps saying other countries pay for tariffs. That’s not how they work.
Tariffs are effectively taxes on imported products. They’re paid by Americans.
TNR: Trump’s Latest Tariff Stunt May Be His Most Deranged Yet
The president’s trade war frenzy continues, now framed as liberation—only without the nylons and cigarettes.
President Donald Trump pronounced April 2, when his administration plans to more than double the tariffs it’s imposed already, “a Liberation Day for our country because we’re going to be getting back a lot of the wealth that we so foolishly gave up to other countries.” April 2 is not to be confused with January 20, which, Trump said in his inaugural speech, was “Liberation Day,” nor with November 4, which Trump predicted in advance would be “Liberation Day”—the liberation in these latter instances being Trump’s triumphal return to the White House. Before 2025 ends, we will surely witness five or six more Liberation Days.
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Public Notice: Trump moves to destroy Columbia University
It’s his latest corrupt quid pro quo.
You’d be forgiven for thinking the Trump administration letter to Columbia University that dropped out of nowhere last Friday night was a fake, some sort of clout-chasing exercise designed to whip liberals into a frenzy.In reality, the letter is extremely real, extremely bad, and just the latest salvo in the administration’s “war on woke.” It’s also par for the course for Donald Trump, who sees government as a patronage system where he can withhold funding unless someone shows him sufficient fealty.
Closer to the Edge The war on public education
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The Conversation: 5 years on, true counts of COVID-19 deaths remain elusive − and research is hobbled by lack of data
Many deaths linked to the virus were never officially counted. A study analyzing data from over 3,000 U.S. counties between March 2020 and August 2022 found nearly 163,000 excess deaths from natural causes that were missing from official mortality records.
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YLE: Vaccines don’t cause autism. So what does?
Another CDC/MMR study is a waste. Autism rates are increasing due to complicated factors.
…- Changes in diagnostic criteria
- Policy changes
- Increased awareness
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Public Domain: Park Service Employees at White House Were Exempted from Mass Firings
As the Trump administration fired hundreds of probationary Park Service employees in February, it spared a special subset from the purge — it exempted from the mass firings National Park Service staffers that help manage the White House and President’s Park.
Records viewed by Public Domain show that at least three NPS probationary employees at the White House, including park guides, received exemptions from the mass firings specifically on the grounds that they worked at the White House. The records were corroborated by an Interior Department source familiar with the matter, but who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
The National Park Service maintains the White House property and President’s Park. The NPS workforce there includes gardeners, guides, painters and maintenance staff.
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Intercept: Musk Is Firing Federal Workers Who Prevent Bloated Tech Contracts
Employees at the federal tech unit 18F say that their role in preventing overspending put a Musk-sized target on their back.
Earlier this month, all of the employees at 18F, a unit of government technologists under the General Services Administration, awoke to a surprise.
The entire department — which helps build, buy, and share technological products across government agencies — discovered they’d been placed on administrative leave.
Wired: DOGE’s Dodgy Numbers Employ a Tesla Technique
Safety researchers claim Elon Musk’s auto company has a long history of potentially misleading stats. Now it looks like his government department is following suit.
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Financial Express: Musk faces losing richest man tag — has lost 148 billion since Jan 17
The Tesla CEO’s fortune, which peaked at $486 billion in December 2024, has been significantly impacted by Tesla’s declining stock, falling sales in key markets, and investor concerns.
TNR: Trump’s Commerce Secretary Is Begging People to Buy Tesla Stock
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During an appearance on Fox News Wednesday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick gave a pitch for buying the billionaire bureaucrat’s struggling Tesla stock.“I think if you wanna learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla! I think it’s unbelievable that this guy’s stock is this cheap. It will never be this cheap again,” Lutnick said, appearing on-screen beside footage of burning electric vehicles—the results of protests at Tesla dealerships across the country.
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Politico: USDA halts millions of dollars worth of deliveries to food banks
The halt in deliveries comes after the Trump administration separately slashed $1 billion for schools and food banks to buy food from farms.
The Agriculture Department has halted millions of dollars worth of deliveries to food banks without explanation, according to food bank leaders in six states.USDA had previously allocated $500 million in deliveries to food banks for fiscal year 2025 through The Emergency Food Assistance Program. Now, the food bank leaders say many of those orders have been canceled.
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LIz Dye: Court Puts Kibosh On EPA Plan To Shout GOLD BARS And Steal $20B Climate Fund
Turns out internet memes do not override written contracts.
Pour one out for Lee Zeldin. The EPA administrator had such high hopes! All he had to do was shout “FRAUD! GOLD BARS! STACEY ABRAMS!” and he could steal $20 billion from climate activists and collect attaboys from Elon Musk and President Trump.
And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddlesome federal judges!
Zeldin had set his sights on $20 billion allocated by Congress in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. As part of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, the EPA made what were essentially block grants to umbrella groups to lend and grant out cash for environmental projects, particularly in economically disadvantaged areas.
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Boing Boing: Fox host floats “death penalty” for Tesla protestors — Karoline Leavitt nods in agreement (video)
Donald Trump pardoned the violent rioters who vandalized the Capitol building and fatally attacked police officers on Janurary 6, 2021 — but Fox News suggests that Tesla protestors should get the death penalty.
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NY Times: Administration Officials Believe Order Lets Immigration Agents Enter Homes Without Warrants
Trump administration lawyers have determined that an 18th-century wartime law the president has invoked to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang allows federal agents to enter homes without a warrant, according to people familiar with internal discussions.
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NY Times: Intelligence Assessment Said to Contradict Trump on Venezuelan Gang
President Trump’s assertion that a gang is committing crimes in the United States at the direction of Venezuela’s government was critical to his invocation of a wartime law last week to summarily deport people whom officials suspected of belonging to that group.
But American intelligence agencies circulated findings last month that stand starkly at odds with Mr. Trump’s claims, according to officials familiar with the matter. The document, dated Feb. 26, summarized the shared judgment of the nation’s spy agencies that the gang was not controlled by the Venezuelan government.
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ABC: Man deported to El Salvador under Alien Enemies Act because of soccer logo tattoo: Attorney
The Department of Homeland Security has accused Barrios of having a gang-affiliated tattoo and claimed a photo of him showed him displaying gang signs. ABC News has reached out to DHS.
The tattoo in question showed a crown sitting on top of a soccer ball with a rosary and the word “Dios” (God), according to Tobin. A declaration from the tattoo artist confirmed that Barrios chose it because it was similar to the Real Madrid soccer team logo, the attorney said. According to Tobin, those alleged gang signs were the hand symbol for rock and roll and “I love you” in sign language.
Tobin also said she submitted records from Venezuela that indicated Barrios had no criminal record in his home country and was employed as a professional soccer player and children’s soccer coach.
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Klippenstein: Trump’s Domestic War on Terrorism
Unlike the post-9/11 Global War on Terrorism (called GWOT), this new Domestic War on Terrorism (let’s call it DWOT) doesn’t bother to link criminal acts to officially designated foreign terrorist organizations. Trump’s DWOT is actually a war on American citizens, and one that reaches into the nation’s universities and into cities and towns across America.
This new War on Domestic Terrorism is nakedly partisan, every bit as politically motivated and vindictive as what Trump has accused Joe Biden and Barack Obama of. But there’s one crucial difference. Trump’s targets are no longer Washington bigwigs. They’re Americans whose names you’ve never heard before.
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NY Times: Musk Set to Get Access to Top-Secret U.S. Plan for Potential War With China
The Pentagon is scheduled on Friday to brief Elon Musk on the U.S. military’s plan for any war that might break out with China, two U.S. officials said on Thursday.
Another official said the briefing will be China focused, without providing additional details. A fourth official confirmed Mr. Musk was to be at the Pentagon on Friday, but offered no details.
Providing Mr. Musk access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded military secrets would be a dramatic expansion of his already extensive role as an adviser to President Trump and leader of his effort to slash spending and purge the government of people and policies they oppose.
It would also bring into sharp relief the questions about Mr. Musk’s conflicts of interest as he ranges widely across the federal bureaucracy while continuing to run businesses that are major government contractors. In this case, Mr. Musk, the billionaire chief executive of both SpaceX and Tesla, is a leading supplier to the Pentagon and has extensive financial interests in China.
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NY Times: Musk Offers $100 to Wisconsin Voters, Bringing Back a Controversial Tactic
Elon Musk is bringing back his most controversial gambit from the 2024 presidential election: paying voters as part of a plan to identify and turn out conservative-leaning ones.
The super PAC that Mr. Musk founded to funnel his fortune into Republican causes, America PAC, said on Thursday that it was offering $100 to registered voters in Wisconsin who sign a petition “in opposition to activist judges” or refer others to sign it. Mr. Musk has been using the group to spend millions of dollars to elect a conservative candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in an April 1 election.
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The Hill: Jack Schlossberg calls out Trump, RFK Jr., says family got no ‘heads up’ on JFK files release
Jack Schlossberg, former President John F. Kennedy’s grandson, called out President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over the release of close to 2,200 files on his grandfather’s assassination.
